I never asked how old he was but Captain_Heroin might just have been my age judging by the oldschool approach he had towards his drug use.
Really sad to hear this for various reasons , 1st and foremost he must have helped save many people in here by convincing them that "less is more " with opiate maintenance drugs ,specially at a time when docs were prescribing ( I kid you not ) 32 mgs of Buprenorphene a day for a tramadol/codeine/vicodin addiction .
When I met him he was on Suboxone and the odd benzo now and then, he would pop a 1st generation anti histamine into the mix as well - his use of buprenorphine/1stG-AM took me back to the days when "Buprex " (0.25mgs ) and " Phenergan " tablets were our substitute for Heroin (80s - we had no approved opiate maintenance drugs - your GP would simply send you home with some clonidine, buscopan and Tramadol -some benzo too if lucky ).
I speak of "Buprex " ( which you might these days know as "temgesic " ) cause it came a point he was dosing lower than that (0.25 mgs) and achieving the state he was after.
His extreme good sense was also noted in his benzo use/advise he gave out ( at least when I interacted with him. ). This and all types of technical info about harm reduction- one of the 1st in here , at least to my knowledge, to make people aware that filtering any drug with a roach/cotton is not alright at all ( unless you know its purity even enables the need not to filter anything that is ). Always as knowledgeable as eager to learn more from people who knew what he did not. Humble basically .
I won´t lie ,I´ve been thinking of him when I ,for example ,go jogging on my own by the twilight hours -conversations and other interactions we had pop up in the most unlikely scenarios.
As I created another account to help with , yet again , another relapse , the 1st or 2nd thing I came across was this Thread. Coincidence ? It´s trendy ,nowadays , to say that there is no such thing, trendy as it may be ...as I type this the moments we shared here in the past are being relieved ,the advises he´s given me at a critical point in my life are still helping me, restraining me ...in many ways he´s still here, his memorial reminding me of my own mortality and our age which is hardly compatible with this type of drug use .
At one point or another, we´ve all had the delusion that addiction tends to afflict the best amidst us the most ...in his case I´m still struggling with the word " delusion " .
Just thought I would drop a few kind words for a "stranger" I admired nonetheless. The other day when I read it I was in shock at the coincidence, couldn´t think of anything ...today i´m just in denial and my thoughts clouded and dispersed ,at least , now able to type a few words that invoke his memory and all the good he did while amongst us .
My sincere condolences to both his family and friends .